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Google Outlines How it Manages User Data Ahead of GDPR

With the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set to go into effect on May 25th, Google laid out a new privacy policy, detailing how and why Google collects the data that powers its various products.

Google is updating its Privacy Policy to make it easier to understand what information the company collects, and why it collects it. The company also added more detail about the options users have to manage, export, and delete data from Google's services. The policy now also includes explanatory videos and illustrations. Jumping to privacy settings directly from the policy is also now easier.

Google has improved both the controls and the clarity of information in My Account so that people are better informed about how and why their data is collected. Within My Account, you can control Location History, Web and App Activity, YouTube Search History and more, across all devices that are signed in to your account.

"We collect information to provide better service to all our users," one section of Google's privacy policy reads. "When you're not signed into a Google Account, we store the information we collect with unique identifiers tied to the browser, application, or device you're using. This helps us to do things like maintain your language preferences across browsing settings."

Manage or mute the ads you see on Google, on websites and in apps using the recently upgraded Ads Settings tool and Mute This Ad control.

Get a clear overview of all the Google products that you use-and the data associated with them-via

Google Dashboard provides an overview of all the Google products that you use-and the data associated with them.

In terms of data portability, the Download Your Data tool has expanded and now includes more Google services, more contextual data controls, and a new setting that helps people schedule regular downloads.

Under the new rules, companies must get consent from parents to process their children's data in certain circumstances. To obtain that consent and to make sure that parents and children have the tools to manage their online experiences, Google is rolling out Family Link-already available in various countries around the world-throughout the EU.

Through Family Link, parents can create a Google Account for their child and are required to provide consent for certain processing of their child's data. Family Link also allows parents to set certain digital ground rules on their child's Android device-like approving or blocking apps, keeping an eye on screen time, or remotely locking their child's device.

For Adsense advertising partners, Google has already asked publishers to get consent from their users for the use of Google's ad tech on their sites and apps under existing legislation. Google is also working with our publisher partners to provide a range of tools to help them gather user consent, and have built a solution for publishers that want to show non-personalized ads, using only contextual information.